Know it!

The world is swimming with lots of data and opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills.

This resource page collects different types of data sets that individuals often want to access. 

It also collections information on other opportunities, like learning a foreign language.

Once you KnowIt, you might need to CodeIt!

                                                                                                                                                                                

Know It     Code It     Write It     Present It     Manage It

Conduct an Experiment

Lab, survey, field? Experiments provide control and the ability to randomize variables of interest. Researchers use these tools to deal with things like selection problems.

Places to do experiments

Harvard Decision Science Laboratory: Run no deception experiments with array of options including interactive computer games and physiological recordings during tasks.

Time Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS): provides opportunities for social science data collection and discovery by increasing speed, precision and efficiency when applying scientific theory/analysis to critical social problems.

Software for conducting experiments

Qualtrics: provides online survey software that can be used to conduct surveys online. Harvard's icommons provides free access.

MediaLab: Stimulus/response and other options often used by psychologists.

z-Tree: Free software for interactive game experiments.

e-Prime: Stimulus/response and other options often used by psychologists.

Amazon Mechanical Turk:  A website through which you can recruit workers for paid tasks.  Helpful if you need participants for surveys, strategic games, experiments etc.

Experimental Turk: A blog on social science experiments using Amazon Mechanical Turk.

mturkr: A package to integrate Amazon Mechanical Turk and R.

Datasets

Trying to find data? Economic data, political data, public opinion, etc.  This page provides links to some of the most valuable sources of data for social scientist.  Most of these resources are quantitative.

Just Getting Started?  Click the Getting Started link for general information about how to navigate the Harvard resources available.

Getting Started

The first step to navigating research is understanding the Harvard resources available to you. 

A useful place to start is http://guides.hcl.harvard.edu/.  This website provides disciplinary specific resources for research.  A great one to get started on is the Beginner's Guide to Using and Finding Numerical Data.

Emailing discipline specific librarians to find a specific piece of data can also be extremely useful.  An overall useful e-mail is govdocs@fas.harvard.edu, which will link you to a data librarian who can help you find what data you need.

In Hollis Classic, you can use the expanded search option to search only for digital materials, and therefore will help you search for data material.

Additionally, the http://eresearch.lib.harvard.edu/V page is a good place to start.  You can click on "E-Resources" to search specific resources such as Google Scholar and JStor.  Google Scholar is an excellent resources for literature review and bibliographic research.  If you are looking for a particular journal, "E-Journals" will allow you to search for specific journals or search journals by discipline.  In addition, clicking "Quick Search" and then "Primo Central" will allow you to search specific articles.

Once you are ready to look for data, you can peruse the resources available on this website based on topic.  For instance, if you need data on stock prices, you could check the Financial/Business tab.  In addition to these links, there are some other resources that may be of interest:

The IQSS Dataverse Network is an excellent resource for accessing virtual data archives.

md4stata provides data sets already formatted for Stata

ICPSR, the inter-university consortium for political and social research provides a large database of social science research

The National Bureau of Economic Research provides a number of varied data sources including macro data, industry data, international trade data, individual data, hospital/provider data, and  demographic and vital statistics. 

WebLib Polymeta API: Allows you to conduct metasearches across multiple repositories using federated search and results clustering.

Note that if all else fails, a really useful tool is to use a secondary source search, for example search Google Scholar for the subject on which you are looking for data.  You will often find another author that has used data you are looking for, and therefore can find the data based on their bibliography.

Cross-Country Data

Political Institutions

Freedom in World: This is a popular Freedom House data set that assigns each country a "freedom" value on a scale from 1 - 7.

Global Peace Index: The Global Peace Index ranks nations by their peacefulness.  The Institute for Economics and Peace spearheaded this project.

Polity IV:  This provides indices of political institutions such as level of democracy, state fragility etc. 

Quality of Government Institute Standard: This dataset provides cross-national comparative data on quality of government indicators. Cross-sectional data pertaining to year 2002 and cross-sectional, time-series data spanning 1946 - 2009 are available.

Quality of Government Social Policy: This dataset provides cross-national comparative data on social policy indicators. Cross-sectional and cross-sectional, time-series datasets available.

Quality of Government Expert: This dataset contains dimensions of quality of government and is based on a survey of country experts.

KOF Index of Globalization: Data on the economic, social, and political dimensions of globalization since 1970, as well as subindices on economic flows, economic restrictions, information flows, personal contact, and cultural proximity.

CIRI Human Rights Index:  One well-known human rights index that covers 195 countries from 1980-2010.

The SERF Human Rights Index:  Index for how well countries fulfill economic and social rights

Corruption Index: One (of many) corruption indices covering approximately 100 countries, calculated as a latent variable that is directly related to its underlying causes.

3P Anti-Trafficking Policy Index: An index of governmental anti-trafficking efforts, in terms of prosecution of traffickers, prevention of human trafficking, and protection of victims, 2000-2010.

Archigos: A dataset of world political leaders 1875-2004, including information on manner of entry and exit, gender, and post-tenure fate.

Educational and Professional Background of Heads of Governments: Data on over 500 political leaders from 72 countries, 1970-2002.

Economic Statistics

OECD iLibrary: Provides access to data and publications of the OECD. See also OECD Stat Extracts, which provides data and metadata for OECD countries. (Harvard Access to OECD data.)

Penn World Table: Purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 189 countries/territories, 1950-2009.

Correlates of War International Trade: Bilateral trade flows and total national exports/imports, 1870-2009.

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch Expanded Trade and GDP Data: data providing estimates of trade flows between independent states (1948-2000) and GDP per capita of independent states (1950-2000).

United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade): International trade statistics data provided to the UN Statistics Divison by 170 reporter countries.

Harvard's Guide to Inter-Governmental Financial Data

Development

DHS:  Demographic and Health Surveys provide data at the household and individual level on a number of measures concerning health outcomes, wealth, education, nutrition, women's empowerment etc.  It is necessary to send in a short proposal for access to data and data should be released within a day or two.

Living Standards of Measurement Survey: This source provides country level household surveys.

Maddison:  This is a popular source for long run GDP data and population data.

World Development Indicators: The world bank's repository of annual development indicators.

IMF Programs and World Bank Projects: yearly dummies for the existence of IMF programs and World Bank Projects in 160 countries, 1970-2008.

AidData: One of the best existing sources of data on international aid projects.

Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD): Lots of development data, including household surveys, firm level data, macro data, and links to national statistical offices.

Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL): Provides data from some high quality randomized controlled trials.

NGO Aid: Aid expenditures by 61 NGOs in 2005.

Sebastian Bauhoff: Collects links to useful development economics datasets.

Labor Statistics

ILO LABORSTA: labor data and metadata for over 200 countries or territories.

International Institutions

UN Treaty Collection: Source of treaties 

United Nations Security Council Membership: A dataset containing a dummy variable indicating if a country has been a temporary UNSC member in a given year.

United Nations General Assembly Voting: Country voting behavior, 1946-2008.

International Courts Data: On compliance, judicial dissents, biographical information on judges, case-law citations, background information on judgments, sentencing by criminal courts, reservations made by states to the jurisdiction of courts, etc.

World Treaty Index: electronic treaty database spanning the 20th century.

The Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP): data regarding the content of military alliance agreements signed by all countries of the world between 1815 and 2003.

Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site: data on international affairs/cooperation, economics, environment, politics and social issues.

Environmental Data

SEDAC Environmental Sustainability: This provides national level data on environmental performance, sustainability and vulnerability 

Collection of Environmental Data: Lots of data on different aspects of the environment, mostly for environmental economics.

International Conflict

Correlates of War Militarized Interstate Disputes: Threats, displays, and the use of force between states, 1816-2006.

Correlates of War National Material Capabilities: a composite index of national capability, plus data on total population, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure, 1816-2001.

Issue Correlates of War Territorial, River, Maritime, and Regime Claims: Data covering 1816-2001.

Issue Correlates of War Colonial History: Data covering 1816-2001.

Ten Million International Dyadic Events: Day level international relations events covering 1990-2004.

Penn State Event Data (Formerly Kansas Event Data): Regional day level event datasets covering the Levant, Turkey, the Gulf, Central Asia, the Balkans, West Africa, and mediation in the Levant and Balkans, various years.

UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset: A conflict-year dataset on armed conflict where at least one party is the government of a state, covering 1946-2010.

UCDP Conflict Data: Various datasets on georeferenced events, external support, actors, conflict termination, peace agreements, one-sided violence, battle-related deaths, and low-intensity conflict.

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data: Data on political violence in developing states, with the dates, location, and types of violence, as well as the groups involved.

Small Arms Trade: Covering 250 states and territories over 1962-2007.

Political Instability Task Force Worldwide Atrocities Dataset: Data on the deliberate killing of noncombatant civilians in political conflicts, 1995-2011, geocoded and standard.

Minorities at Risk: Data on the status and conflicts of all politically active communal groups with populations totaling at least 500,000.

Global Terrorism Database: Day-level domestic and transnational terrorist events categorized by type, target, and perpetrator, 1970-2010.

International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE): Day-level data on transnational terrorist events, 1968-2010.

Peace Science Society: A resource for data on peace analysis and conflict management, but also welcomes and utilizes relevant work on the social and natural sciences. The primary concern of PSS is the improvement of social science theory as it relates to internation relations.

Election Data

Around the world countries choose leaders by elections. Some open, fair, and contested, others less so. Here are some resources about elections across the globe.

Worldwide

Elections Resources on the Internet: Links to national and local election statistics from around the world.

Global Historical Evolution of Elections Project: Project directed by Daniel Ziblatt to collect election, roll call and petition data going back to 1800.

Election Results Archive: Election results from around the world for countries with a minimum threshold of democratic performance as defined by Freedom House rankings and Polity III/Polilty IV rankings.

Emory University Electronic Data Center: Emory University's database with electoral data

Lijphart Elections Archive: Election data for most democratic countries at the district-level.

Voter Turnout: Voter turnout for elections world-wide.

Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA): a repository of detailed election results at the constituency level for lower house legislative elections from around the world.


United States

ANES: Data from the American National Election Studies includes data on voting behavior in elections, public opinion, and attitudes of the electorate

Congressional Data: This site includes data on congressional elections as well as many other data sets related to congressional voting and members.

CQ Congressional Data: Biographies, voting records, and a lot of other information about members of Congress.

CQ Press Voting and Elections Collection: complex data on American voters, political parties, campaigns & elections, modern voting behavior, key events and issues, and biographies

Election Data Archive Dataverse: A shared space with election data from US states.

Electoral Returns for Statewide Offices in the United States, 1874 - 1952: County Level Election Returns for selected state offices  for 15 States

Federal Elections Project: Distributes precinct-level data from 2000.

State Legislative Election Returns, 1967 - 2003:  State legislative election returns

U.S. Congressional Data: Office of the Clerk: Official vote counts for federal elections published and maintained by the U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Federal Elections Commission: The FEC monitors federal funding of federal elections in the U.S.  This site contains data on contributions for users.

U.S. Historical Election Returns, 1788 - 1823

America Votes: Maintains information on national and congressional races, in addition to public opinion blogs.

Campaign Finance Information Center: data on state and federal election funding or what they call "campaign money trail."

Follow the Money: nonprofit organization revealing the influence of campaign money on state-level elections and public policy in all 50 states.

Election Studies: high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation.

2004 Election Panel Study, BYU Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy: includes a nationally representative sample of the electorate but also cases in both presidential and U.S. Senate "battleground" states; questionnaires and press releases.

CPAN Election Guide: Data on important issues/legislation, current elections/candidates, and a media guide.

Atlas of US Presidential Elections: Data sets compiled from official sources on elections (with county FIPS identification). Includes information on election results, news, and forums.

Vote View: data and analysis on house and senate rankings, roll call and voting. 

Charles Stewart III Data: data on 2004 election returns/residual votes.

Thomas M. Carsey Data: data set with information on state legislative election returns from 1967 through 2003.

North America (except US)

Elections Canada: An independent nonpartisan agency which provides data on federal elections and referendrums in Canada.

Western Europe

British Elections and Politics: This site has detailed information and analysis on British elections

Central and Eastern Europe

Post-Communist Europe: Electoral and legislative data for most post-communist European countries

Russian Elections: Site of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. Data is limited for English version when compared to Russian version.

Ukrainian Elections: Presidential and parliamentary electoral results, as well as other data for Ukraine. 

Polish Elections: 1998200220062010

Czech Elections: Election results for the Czech Republic for The Chamber of Deputies, The Senate, Regional Councils, Local Councils, and the European Parliament.


Asia

Afghanistan Election Data: data and visualization tools for Afghan elections

Ethnography

Ethnographies are an anthropological tool used to define cultural variables for societies over time.

Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas:  a database on 1167 societies.

eHARF:  a cross-cultural database on aspects of cultural and social life

Finance/Business

Looking for financial or business data?  These sources will provide you with stock prices, consumer prices and more.

Harvard Business School Guide:  links to business and financial data.

WRDS: The Wharton Research Data services provides financial, economic, and marketing data.

Enterprise Surveys: Provides survey data at the firm level.  Must send an email introducing yourself to receive data.

UNCTAD: The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development provides commodity prices and statistics on FDI flows and stocks and participation in international investment related agreements.

IMF International Financial Statistics: International and domestic financial data including exchange rates, international liquidity, interest rates, money and banking, prices, inflation, and deflation, 1948-present.

IMF Government Finance Statistics: Time series data on central government revenue, expenditure, grants, financing, and debts, 1990-present.

IMF Balance of Payment Statistics: International economic transactions data and investment positions, 1960-present.

IMF Direction of Trade Statistics: Value of exports and imports between countries and their tradingpartners, 1980-present.

Link to Harvard's Subscription to IMF Data for more access.

Central Bank Governors: Information on the term in office of national central bank governors since 1970.

Harvard's Guide to Foreign Direct Investment Resources

Geographic Data

Social science research is increasingly relying on geographic data.   Geographic Information System (GIS) is a collection of computer hardware and software that can be used to manipulate geographically referenced information.  GIS used with geographic data can be used to link data sets linked to geographic features i.e. a recent study linked killings in Rwanda to geographic orientation in relation to radio towers for incendiary radio stations.  In addition, this software can be used to create maps to accompany research papers.

GIS Software

QuantumGIS: This is a free open source software package, which runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.  This software is very user friendly and provides step by step tutorial.

ArcGIS: This is the most detailed and robust GIS software available.  It is large download, trickier to use, and not available on Mac, so ensure you need the features for your project before downloading.  To  download, login at upper right.  Click Software > ESRI Software.  Click "Download ArcGIS 10 Desktop Software."

GIS Tutorials

GIS Support on Campus

GIS support is available at the CGA Help Desk located in Rm K-00A of Cgis - Knafel Building.  Office hours are held weekly on Tuesday, 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm. Contact contact@help.cga.harvard.edu for help online or to schedule an appointment.

Geographic Data

Diva-GIS : This provides free geographic data for any country in the world.

CShapes: CShapes is a dataset created by Nils B. Weidmann that provides historical maps of state boundaries and capitals in the post-World War II period.

Harvard Geospatial Library: Collection of map data in one database.

Harvard Map Collection: Many many different data and other resources for maps.

Legislative Data

Parliamentary / congressional data. A number of countries maintain records of parliamentary / congressional speeches and proceedings.

United States

United States Congressional Record

House Floor Activities, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives 

Voter Information Services (VIS): a non-partisan resource that provides information on the effects of federal laws enacted by the U.S. Congress and the role of individual members of Congress in the legislative process.

CQ Weekly Report: Provides weekly (pre- and post-) editions on information such as final vote tallies, campaign spending, challenger quality and other analytical reports.

Legislative Studies: A platform for those interested in legislative processes, behavior, and representation opportunities to meet and exchange ideas.

C. Lawrence Evans Data: the first release of the Congressional Whip Count Database, which provides extensive data about the whip polls conducted by party leaders in the U.S. House prior to major roll call votes on the floor, 1955-86.

World

Hansard:  Official Report of the the Parliament of the United Kingdom for recent years

Historic Hansard:  Official Report of the the Parliament of the United Kingdom for past years

German Bundestag Stenographic Record: Plenarprotokolle-Stenographische Berichte

Japanese Diet: full-text database of proceedings of Japanese Diet since 1947

Lok Sabha: Official record of the Parliament of India

Public Opinion

Links to public opinion data repositories and support resources.  Also check out Harvard Library's Guide to Public Opinion Data.

United States

The American Panel Survey (TAPS): a survey research platform with about 200,000 respondents for a wide range of social science research.

Annenberg Election Surveys: Individual interviews from 2000, 2004, 2008 on traits Americans want in a president. Special emphasis on media exposure and political communication.

ANES: American National Election Survey - provides data on voting, public opinion, and political participation

Gallup: has many useful tables, but will only support data if contacted and asked nicely.

HuffPo: Keeps track of poll's topline results.

iPoll: repository of public opinion data managed by the U. of Connecticut

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: Survey data from 1997.  Includes lots of political, election and callback surveys. See also the main site of the Pew Research Center for additional data.

Research America: A well maintained resource on the latest public opinon polls on research to improve both U.S. and global health.

World Public Opinion

Polling the Nations: Compilation of public opinion surveys from 18,000+ surveys and 1,700+ polling organizations, conducted from 1986 through the present in the United States and more than 100 other countries around the world.

World Value Survey: cross-national data on people's values and beliefs.  This data set has been maintained since 1981

ZACAT - GESIS: ISSP, Eurobarometer, European Values Survey, and additional national and cross-national surveys

Middle East 

Arab Barometer: Opinion Polls on/for Arab countries

Africa

AfroBarometer: Opinion Polls on/for African countries

Latin America

Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP): Public opinion data from 26 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Includes US as of 2010. Surveys conducted every two years.

Latinobarometer: Annual cross-national public opinion project in Latin America that began in 1995. Covers 18 countries.

Asia

Asiabarometer: Surveys of East, Southeast, South, and Central Asian countries.  

Asian Barometer: Surveys of East and South Asian countries, run out of Taiwan.

JPOLL: Japanese public opinion data, translated into English.

Regional Data Sets

Collected Regional Data

World Bank Countries & Regions:  data sets and bank project documents by region

Africa

AfroBarometer: Opinion Polls on/for African countries

Europe

CESSDA: The council of European social science data archives provides data and support in finding data to users.

EU Project 2010: Data on quality of government within the 27 countries of the European Union.

Openly Local: data on local councils in the UK, scraped from council websites.

Middle East

Arab Barometer: Opinion Polls on/for Arab countries

ICDT:  Islamic Centre for Development and Trade.  This website provides trade statistics on Middle Eastern countries.

Asia

Indian Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation: Country-wide data by sector (Industry/Agriculture/Social/Service). Also, national accounts, socioeconomic census, and NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) data.

India Water Portal: 200+ datasets on water and related issues in India. Also, meteorological data for the past 100 years

India Stat:  Aggregator site with national, state-level, and sector-specific data. Also data on crime, health, sports, etc.

Office of the Census Commissioner, India: Census and population data.

Election Commission of India: Election results for Indian general elections and state-level elections in Excel format. Also important election-related laws and summary of electoral reforms proposed by Commission, together with political party information.

World Bank - South Asia Resources: Landing page for analysis, country data, evaluations and projects on all countries in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangaladesh, Srilanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan).

Social Science Japan Data Archive: Assorted Japan data.

China

Texas A&M China Archive: Data on China and US-China relations, including demographic, geospatial, arms exports, public accounting, financial history, sectoral, social stability, and some survey data.

China National Bureau of Statistics: Economic, industrial, transportation, housing, telecommunications, and other sectoral data.

HOLLIS China Data Online: Portal to national, provincial, and county level Chinese economic and census indicators.

Sebastian Bauhoff: Collects links to useful sources on China.

Chinese General Social Survey: Annual or biannual survey of China's urban and rural households designed to gather longitudinal data on social trends and the changing relationship between social structure and quality of life.  Register for use.

China Health and Nutrition Survey: One of the most widely used surveys for micro-level research on China, run by UNC Chapel Hill.

China Household Income Project: Survey data on income distributions and poverty.

UMich China Data Center: GIS data on various levels, statistical yearbooks, some historical data.

China Dimensions: Geocoded data generally from the early 1990s on maps, health, and economics, from the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center.

Chinese Health and Family Life Survey: University of Chicago survey on sexual behaviors in China 1999-2000, covering 18 provinces, 83 communities, and 5,000 individuals.

Gansu Human Capital Project: Penn site with links to several recent or ongoing projects, including the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, Rural School Networks, and Human Capital in China's Urban Labor Market.

China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and Chinese Family Panel Studies, large scale surveys from the Peking University Institute of Social Science Survey.

Chinese Humanistic and Social Science Survey Data Archive from the Renmin University National Survey Research Center.

Tsinghua China Data Center: data from various surveys including the Study and Development of Chinese Undergraduates, Chinese Urbanization and Labor Migration, Survey of Rural High School in Shaanxi Province 2007-2008, Survey of Village Public Investment in China 2008.

China Household Finance Survey: the first national representative survey on household finance in China, covering 320 communities in 80 counties of 25 provinces totaling over 8,400 families.  From the Southwestern University of China.

China Data Online:  Statistical data from China's National Bureau of Statistics.

Latin America

Dilemmas in Democracy from the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America: Contains data related to the paper research on "Dilemmas in Democracy" in Latin America and includes data on development, economic reform, individual and collective political participation.

Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP): Public opinion data from 26 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Includes US as of 2010. Surveys conducted every two years.  (Harvard access)

Latinobarometer: Annual cross-national public opinion project in Latin America that began in 1995. Covers 18 countries. 

US Census Data

Links and resources for working with US Census data.  Also, check out Harvard University's Guide to U.S. Census Data.

County Business Patterns: Industry level employment data at the US county level.

American Community Survey: Ongoing survey of community demographics and economic information at the community level

Fact Finder : A Searchable Database of Data sets from U.S. Census Bureau

US Agriculture Census: Collection of Ag. Census Resources

Social Explorer: This resource provides maps detailing demographic data in the US at various geographic levels.

US Economic Data

Macroeconomic Data

USDA : international macroeconomic data set from 1969 - 2020

FRED: Federal Reserve Economic Data provides 44,000 economic time series from 38 sources particularly there is data on banking and finance, population, employment, labor markets, business activity, prices, exchange rates etc.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): Principal source for federal data in the field of labor economics and statistics. 

American Fact Finder: source for population, housing economic and geographic information and data. 

Economic Policy Institute: Has long-term economic data for the U.S. that can be downloaded in Excel or zip formats. 

US Foreign Aid Allocations: The US Overseas Loans and Grants Database (Greenbook) published by USAID provides the complete historical record of US foreign assistance by recipient country and program.

Urban Institute: provides data from research based on the nation’s social and fiscal challenges.


Individual datasets

E. Scott Adler Data: dataset includes a wide range of economic, social and geographic information for every U.S. congressional district, from 1943-1998.

US Political Data

Legislative

The United States Congressional Record

House Floor Activities, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives 

Influence Explorer: Data on campaign finance, sourced and organized from the Federal Election Commission. API allows for submission of complicated queries.

Voter Information Services (VIS): a non-partisan resource that provides information on the effects of federal laws enacted by the U.S. Congress and the role of individual members of Congress in the legislative process.

CQ Weekly Report: Provides weekly (pre- and post-) editions on information such as final vote tallies, campaign spending, challenger quality and other analytical reports.

Legislative Studies: A platform for those interested in legislative processes, behavior, and representation opportunities to meet and exchange ideas.

C. Lawrence Evans Data: the first release of the Congressional Whip Count Database, which provides extensive data about the whip polls conducted by party leaders in the U.S. House prior to major roll call votes on the floor, 1955-86.

Executive

The White House Briefing Room: Official site for timely and accurate U.S. presidential events, public statements, legislations and disclosures.

Ethics Data: U.S. federal government website with data on such topics as campaign finance, lobbying, and White House visitor logs.

Judicial

 The Supreme Court Database: data and analysis on natural courts tracing back to 1953.

Supreme Court Opinions: supreme court opionion writing database.

Judicial Elections Data Initiative (JEDI): data on elections to state courts of last resort from 1990 to 2010.


Public Policy

Pew Center on the States: provides nonpartisan reporting and research, advocacy, and technical assistance to help states deliver better results and achieve long-term fiscal health by investing in programs that provide the strongest returns.

Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS): a platform facilitating interdisciplinary inquiry in the social sciences and research into important public policy arenas. Provides replication data for all studies conducted by ISPS-affiliated researchers.

Policy Agendas Project: collects and organizes data from various archived sources to trace changes in the national policy agenda and public policy outcomes since the Second World War.


Other

National Governors Association (NGA): data on how US governors are collectively identifying issues concerning state and national policy.

Vanderbilt TV News Archive: archive of television news from US national television networks.

Compilations

Some websites aggregate multiple sources of data together. We like these sites, and the people that have made them. Here are some that we have found.

Social Science Electronic Data Library: "600 premier data sets and 275,000 variables"...have fun! Nice search features too.

Data on the Net: listing of 363 Internet sites of numeric Social Science statistical data, data catalogs, data libraries, social science gateways, addresses and more.

Fedstats: A website that collects data from 100's of US federal, state, and local agencies.

Resources for Economists on the Internet: Literally, this is what the site is called.

The Data Mine: CQ Roll Call's multimedia blog which features interactive visualizations of US government and congressional data along with in-depth, policy-oriented analysis of the latest facts and figures 

Collection of Environmental Data: Lots of data on different aspects of the environment, mostly for environmental economics.

Collection of Economics and Finance Data: Varied types of data, much of it for macroeconomics and finance purposes.

International Economics Statistics: Varied types of data on international trade, growth, etc..

Health data: Varied types of data on health, including US and International data

Historical Statistics of the United States: Provides data on demographics, politics, & economics in the United States from the colonial period until now.

International Trade data: Varied types of data on international trade

LexisNexis Statistical Insight: This is Lexis Nexis's statistics database.  Click open optional user profile in upper left corner to create a user profile.

International Relations Data: Paul Hensel provides a useful assortment of data on international states, alliances, geography, conflict, cooperation, economics, the environment, politics, and social issues.

Learn Statistics

Learning statistics is a crucial tool for conducting research. We have put lots of more specific links on our CodeIt page, but here we've collected various pedagogical links and methods courses available online.

Harvard Extension School:

MIT OpenCourseWare:  

Coursera:  

John Hopkins Open Courseware:  

University of California, Irvine OCW:

Opposum: Online Portal for Social Science Education in Methodology

For other Open Courseware classes, check out the Open Courseware Consortium

Learn a Language

Do you want to learn a language? There are great opportunities at Harvard and beyond for language study and immersion experiences.

Language Departments at Harvard

African Languages: Amharic, Bamanakan, Cape Verdan Creole, Chichewa, Dinka, Gikuyu, Haitian Creole, Ibibio, Igbo, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Krio, Luganda, Oromo, Pulaar, Setswana, Shona, Somali, Sudanese Arabic, Swahili, Twi, Wolof, Xhosa, Yuru, Zuu

East Asian Languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Mongolian

Near Eastern Languages: Akkadian, Sumerian, Arabic, Armenian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Yiddish

Romance Languages: Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish

Slavic Languages: Russian, Czech, Polish, Ukranian

South Asian Languages: Sanskrit, Pali, Nepali, Urdu and Hindi, Tamil, Tibetan, Thai,

Student Groups

Study Abroad/Language Study

Harvard Summer School 2012:  A list of Harvard summer study abroad programs in foreign language, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Study Abroad Database: Harvard Database of suggested study abroad programs

Middlebury Language School: The Middlebury Language School provides intensive language classes.  Most classes are domestic.

Web Resources

Library Links

Links to various library resources at Harvard and beyond.

Harvard Libraries

HU PrimoPrimo Central is a cross-disciplinary resource that covers hundreds of millions of e-resources, such as journal articles, e-books, and digital collections.

e-Resources Category view: By selecting on category view for the Harvard e-Resources system you can link to multiple databases and resources for your subject area of interest.

News Resources (around the world!)

Links to news and reporting from around the world. Including advice on how to get access a HU member.

Some link pages to US state, national, and international news: here.

Search

Lots of various search engines. Some you don't know about!

Google: Duh.

Wolfram's Alpha: A new type of search engine. It gives you access to the world's facts and data and calculates answers across a range of topics, including science, math, economics, politics, .... This is part of what is behind Apple's Siri software.

Factual: Collection and collation of lots and lots of "facts", also contains links to data sets on things like education and government statistics.

LexisNexis Library Express API: This service allows users to search for and access over 10,000 full text news, business, and legal publications, including backfiles, recent national and regional news, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.

The Wayback Machine: Over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.  Useful if you are trying to scrape historical data that seems no longer available, for example.

Pages for the Profession

Scholarometer: This service (available as an API or browser extension) provides impact analysis estimates of resources retrieved, using a citation analysis function that totals appearance of one resource in reference lists of others.  It also collects information about authors and disciplines, including their interrelationships.

SubSift: An API to support academic peer review through submission sifting -- connecting conference or journal papers to potential peer reviewers using papers written by the peer reviewer.

Theory Development

Building compelling theories of human behavior is one of the hardest things to do. On this page we've collected several resources.

Rational Choice Theories

Sociologist Diego Gambetta on Hedgehogs and Foxes in theory development

Economist Hal Varian on building economic models in your spare time